Hmm after Nitro Deluxe the bad news keeps on coming, it always comes in threes…one you probably don’t know and the other you do.
Of course everyone’s talking about the death of Adam Yauch aka MCA of the Beastie Boys – I’m sure as all the Beasties loved an eclectic range of music he wouldn’t mind me first talking about Lloyd Brevett of the Skatalites who sadly died of a stroke a few weeks after the tragic shooting of his son. Skatalites are up there with the best in ska, and backed up a lot of tracks under other people’s names, and are quite well sampled – take a listen to Nimrod, you’ll recognise it. Sadly that leaves one of the original Skatalites left, their drummer Lloyd Knibb died last year.
I’m probably the wrong person to talk about MCA or the Beasties, but their influence on mashups is undeniable through the Paul’s Boutique album, which along with the classics from Public Enemy and The Bomb Squad and 3 Feet High and Rising from De La Soul really pushed sampling onto the map. And likewise that debt was repaid with the likes of the Beastles from djbc and many other mashup productions out there – in fact you’d be hard pressed to find any mashup producer who hasn’t done at least one Beasties bootleg. They were really good at releasing acapellas and instrumentals knowing what remix/DJ culture they came from, which is surprisingly rare.
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